Nonprofit to open new Catholic school in Logan in 2012

A Cristo Rey Network Catholic High School is being planned to open in September 2012 in Logan at the former Our Lady of Hope parish school.

"There are 24 schools like this across the country, and their mission is to take underprivileged kids and get them into college," said John McConnell, chairman of the board of St. Joseph's Prep and one of the new school's organizers. "Ninety-nine percent go on to college. We know it works."

Cristo Rey schools offer a college-prep, Catholic education to low-income, urban students who attend school four days a week and work the fifth day to help pay tuition, McConnell said.

He said the group has a letter of intent with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to lease the Our Lady of Hope school, at Broad and Duncannon streets, which closed in June 2009. It had only 136 students in the pre-kindergarten-to- eighth-grade school.

Mary Rochford, superintendent of education for the Archdiocese, said yesterday that the Archdiocese welcomes the new school.

"We are certainly very pleased and happy for the Cristo Rey Network model to come to Philadelphia," she said.

She said that it provides an "opportunity for families who are not able to afford the Archdiocese schools."

McConnell said the coed school plans to open with one class a year, starting with a ninth-grade class of 125 students.

He said the school will charge about $2,200 tuition, but after scholarships and fundraisers most parents will pay only about $1,100. Archdiocesan high schools charge about $6,000 per student.

The Cristo Rey Network was founded by Jesuit priests in Chicago, but only 11 of its schools are operated by the Jesuits. McConnell said that the Cristo Rey here will be owned by an independent, privately funded, nonprofit corporation.

And both the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IMH) and the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales plan to "co-endorse" the school, contributing their educational traditions and experience "to develop the spiritual culture of the school."

This isn't the first time Philadelphians planned to start a Cristo Rey school.

In January 2010, alumni of Northeast Catholic High School for Boys had meetings to see if parents would support a Cristo Rey school there.

North Catholic, at Torresdale and Erie avenues, was closed at the end of last school year, along with Cardinal Dougherty High School, 2nd Street and Godfrey Avenue, because of dwindling enrollments.